Skeleton Crew
by Chrissy Almasy
Summary: TF:TM. It was dark inside. Dark and incredibly messy. Everything that hadn't been nailed down when the shuttle crashed had been upended. Carefully checking where he placed his pedes, Springer ventured inside. "Ratchet? Ironhide? Anyone?"


A/N: It's been ages since I wrote and TF fanfic, but this one popped into my head and wouldn't let go. Takes place during TF:TM. The character deaths still make me want to bawl my eyes out, and a plot bunny decided to give me good reason to: a sad little fic about what Springer was trying to do to save Prime's life.

Warnings: Sad story. Takes place the aftermath of the battle at Autobot City, so that means death, bodies, graphic description of bodies, and more death. (What did you expect? They killed off half the cast!)

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, or even the angst.

* * *

It was one of the few relatively undamaged rooms in the otherwise completely shot-up Autobot City, but as Springer and Blaster carried in one dead frame after another, it bore a gruesome testimony to what the Decepticon raid had cost them.

With a grim frown, Springer placed the remains of Wheeljack next to the other fallen warriors that were laid out neatly in the makeshift morgue. One eye in the engineer's face stared blankly through him, the other side of the helm shattered like a glass sphere.

The triple-changer tried not to register the carnage. Big 'bots don't cry, and he wasn't about to start now.

"Is everyone accounted for?" he asked Blaster.

The communications officer didn't respond, but shifted a few of the bodies, opening a large space among them.

"Blaster?"

"Just passed the med bay," said Blaster, his usually vibrant voice dull. "'S not looking good, Springer, m' man. Not looking good at all…"

Springer clenched and unclenched his fists. It couldn't be that bad. Prime had been through worse scrapes and lived. Blaster must've seen things wrong. He paced out the room and towards the med bay. But before he could go in, Ultra Magnus blocked his path very intentionally.

"Let me in, Magnus," Springer said irritably. "Blaster's talking nonsense and I want to see for myself that he's wrong."

"He's not wrong," the Commander said tersely. "Perceptor is doing what he can, but—"

"But nothing! Prime survived worse than this!"

"Only Perceptor is not a doctor," said Ultra Magnus. "That's why I need you to retrieve the crew of the crashed shuttle, and do it _fast_!"

The triple-changer gave him an incredulous look. Then it dawned on him. "Ratchet was on board that shuttle."

"Exactly!" The urgency was visible on the Commander's normally passive faceplates. "And with _his_ capabilities, Prime might still stand a chance!"

"Got it!"

Springer transformed and drove at full speed through the corridors of the City to the nearest exit.

::_Blaster! Get me the coordinates of the crashed shuttle's emergency location transmitter,::_ he yelled over his comlink. _::Now!::_

_::The coordinates of-::_

_:: Now, Blaster!:: _

_::Okay, okay. Comin' right up.::_

He came to the exit and changed into helicopter mode without slowing down, banking off in the general direction that he remembered seeing the shuttle disappear to. He'd already started a scan when the exact coordinates flashed on his HUD. Radioing a 'thank you' to Blaster, he immediately adjusted his course and headed for the mountain range west of the City.

Before long, he could make out the crash site. There was still smoke coming from the site and the huge orange wreck stood out like a sore thumb on the green and grey of the mountain slope.

A quick structural scan confirmed what his visuals had already registered: the wreck had broken into three pieces, with the cockpit section separated from the cargo holds and engine compartments. The latter fortunately had crashed away from the cockpit, because the black, smoking pit it had left suggested that what fuel had been left inside had exploded on impact.

In all, the cockpit section looked like it might be relatively intact. Except for the huge gaping hole in the side, of course… Springer landed by that hole, since the structural scan had showed that to be the easiest access point.

Without the noise of his blades, he noticed how eerily quiet it was. He heard the soft sizzling of the short circuiting electricity cables that protruded from the damaged hull, but otherwise there wasn't a sound.

Not good.

"Hello?" he called as he stepped through the hole.

It was dark inside. Dark and incredibly messy. The cockpit section lay on a slope, sideways and nose slightly up, so everything that hadn't been nailed down when it crashed, had been upended and piled up on one side. Carefully checking where he placed his pedes, he ventured inside.

"Ratchet? Ironhide? Anyone?"

He wasn't sure who else had been on aboard the shuttle, but typically the skeleton crew needed to fly this type of vessel was a crew of four.

"Hello?"

No reply. No sound, no movement.

He continued deeper into the shuttle, supporting himself on the sloping hull to keep more or less upright. With the next step, he nearly slipped. He caught himself before he fell, if barely. Grumbling, he scanned to floor to see what he had slipped on.

Energon. A long slick of energon. It ran from somewhere by the pilots' seats down to where he was standing now, disappearing under a crumbled heap of debris right in front of him.

Springer knelt down to investigate, but immediately wished he hadn't.

He found an arm and a midsection that seemed connected by only a single strip of armour. The metal was scorched, frayed, coated with energon, hydraulic fluid and Primus knew what else. There was the lower half of an Autobot symbol, but everything from there on up was gone. No chest, no head, nothing.

Springer fought the urge to purge his tanks. Despite the overall dark grey colour of the armour, he had a good idea who he was looking at.

He couldn't stop a dry heave, but then violently suppressed another. He had a job to do, and although he felt a sharp sting of grief for the old frontliner, Springer was grateful that it wasn't the one he was looking for.

However, if the Deceptions had made such short work of a seasoned warrior like Ironhide, he didn't dare to think of what they'd done to the rest of the crew. Dread settling deeper in his holding tanks, Springer decided to do what he hadn't dared so far: an infrared scan, searching for anything that was still generating energy.

Initially he saw only black, with the occasional fritz of electricity from a severed cable.

"No… this can't be happening…" He muttered under his breath. Magnus depended on him. _Prime_ depended on him! He couldn't let it end this way.

Springer hastened his pace, insofar as that was possible without tripping over torn up panels and – Pit, was that Brawn? He didn't stop to check. Up ahead, he was picking up something that was just a little warmer than everything else. At this point he didn't care who it was. Finding _anyone_ left alive in here would be nothing short of a miracle.

The heat source, if you could call it that, came from underneath a pile of rubble, where the ceiling of the shuttle had collapsed. It was too dark to see anything but indistinct shapes, so he switched his optics to night vision. In the strange, green glow, he saw that the bulkheads of this part of the cockpit had bent down. One part had broken off, crushing the twisted shape that might once have been a Datsun.

Springer forced himself to ignore the body and focus on the pinprick of heat under the debris. He tugged and pushed until he got one panel loose and then shoved it aside. With a loud clatter, it fell down to the lowest part of the wreck.

The heat signal became a little stronger now, but not much. He pulled another warped panel out of the way, and then he could make out the shape of a helm. With a chevron.

"Ratchet?" It came out as a whisper.

He heard the sound of static, like that of a malfunctioning vocalizer.

_::Ratchet? Are you functional?::_

_::N-no…:: _

The reply was sickeningly weak, but Springer felt incredibly hopeful nonetheless. He knelt down and touched the medic's shoulder. Peering further underneath the bulkhead trapping the lower part of Ratchet's frame, he saw several large, jagged holes in the medic's chest.

Then the terrible reality sank in.

"You weren't joking, were you?" he whispered, mostly to himself.

With terrible effort, Ratchet turned his head towards the triple-changer.

_::… can't see you… Springer?::_

"Yeah, it's me," he said, sliding his hand under the cracked white helm for – for what? Comfort? There sure as Pit wasn't anything else he could offer.

_::...the others…?::_

Springer looked away, accidentally catching a glimpse of Prowl's prone form. He considered lying, but then Ratchet had seen so much death that he would know it with all his sensors offline.

_::That bad… ey?::_ the CMO said slowly when Springer didn't reply. His sadness was marred with a tang of guilt. _::…couldn't've helped them… not in the shape…I'm in…::_

"Prime's dying, too," Springer confessed. He instantly regretted that when Ratchet grimaced in pain and a strangled sound came from his vocalizer.

"He did kill Megatron," the triple-changer added quickly. "Saved the day for us. But without your help, he's gonna die, just like the others."

_::Wheel…jack…can…::_

Springer vented, the image of the engineer's destroyed face too vivid in his memory. "Wheeljack's gone, too, doc," he said softly.

Ratchet's hurtful expression tensed for a moment, but then mellowed suddenly to a faint smile.

_::Ah yes…:: _he said, sounding bemused._ ::That would explain…why I can see _him_… but not you…:: _

Hydraulic systems failed with nothing but a faint hiss, but Springer's pump skipped a beat at the sound.

"Ratchet?"

No reply.

"Ratchet!"

In terror, he checked his infrared scanner. The pinprick of warmth was slowly ebbing away.

Springer couldn't move, couldn't think. His hand was still cradling the now greying helm of their CMO. Their last hope… For a long moment, the world stood still.

Only for a moment.

_::Springer, report!::_

The anxiety in Ultra Magnus' eternally professional voice was spark wrenching. Springer didn't need to guess why. He had to respond, but he couldn't find the words to.

_::Springer!::_

_::No survivors,:: _he finally managed to blurt out. _::I'm sorry, Magnus. They-they're all dead.::_

There was a long, excruciating silence on the other end. Then the connection was cut off abruptly.

Springer stared into the darkness for a while. Finally, he gently lowered Ratchet's head and brought his hands to his face. Big 'bots don't cry, he'd always told himself. But there was a first time for everything.

* * *

I love Ratchet and I hate what they did to him. At least Prime got to come back!

Please let me know what you think. Reviews make me happy, and after writing this fic, I could use some happiness ;p


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